Artificial Heart Implanted in Ky.

Published 2:08 pm, Monday, April 25, 2016

Doctors at a Louisville hospital have implanted a self-contained artificial heart in a critically ill patient, the eighth such surgery in the United States but the first since April.

Only one of the previous patients _ Tom Christerson of Central City, Ky., who received his heart in September 2001 in Louisville _ is still alive.

The latest surgery took place Tuesday, Jewish Hospital said in a statement Wednesday. The hospital said it would not release the patient's name or other details at the request of the family. The patient was in critical but stable condition Wednesday, the hospital said.

Robert Tools of Franklin, Ky., was the first to receive the self-contained heart, a softball-sized pump made of plastic and titanium and powered by batteries. It has no wires or tubes sticking through the skin, a technological leap from earlier mechanical hearts that were attached by wires and tubes to machinery outside the body.

Tools received the heart July 2, 2001, and lived five months.

Abiomed Inc. of Danvers, Mass., the heart's maker, resumed recruiting volunteers for the artificial heart four months ago following a moratorium.

Because the device is unproven, patients must have a 70 percent chance of dying within 30 days to qualify for the operation. The moratorium was to allow further study of the device.

The company hopes to obtain approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration by early next year, and begin selling the heart by the end of 2004, a spokeswoman said last month.

Irene Quinn, whose husband James died 10 months after getting an implant, sued Abiomed and Hahnemann University Hospital in Philadelphia in October. She claims her husband wasn't adequately informed of the ordeal that faced him.